Usage of the Internet has become a daily occurrence for many people around the world. Internet usage has been driven to higher and more powerful levels by the likes of major search engines such as Google™ and Yahoo!™. Driving Internet usage even higher has been the advent and rise of social networking sites, such as Facebook™ and Myspace™, as well as personal blogging sites such as Wordpress™, and microblogging sites such as Twitter™ and Tumblr™. Global users of the Internet post information and content daily to such social networking and blogging sites, and other users of the Internet may find information posted using search engines.
As the Internet has grown, social media has grown along with it. No longer bounded by distance and geography, users of the Internet are free to immediately communicate with anyone, anywhere and at any time. However, with this new means for almost instantaneous communication comes a very real price.
Almost all content that is published online, be it a letter to a friend, a photo shared on a social networking site, or a video published and then linked in a blog post, is immortalized online. Without direct action, such published information is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year, forever. As un-moderated as the Internet is currently, a problem exists when the information published is unfavorable, damaging, bullying or even defamatory to a person.
Unfavorable information that is published online can be quite damaging to a person. Lies, half-truths and misstated information can have real and serious impacts on a victim, from the loss of a job, the ending of a marriage or other civil union, and even eventual suicide or other self-harming activities.
Attempting to have the unfavorable content removed from the Internet can be a daunting task. One conventional method is a lawsuit, which can be cumbersome, slow and expensive. In suing a publisher of the unfavorable information for defamation or other civil torts, a victim will often need to hire an attorney, pay court and service fees, and wait years for an ultimate resolution of the matter. During this period that the lawsuit is ongoing, the unfavorable information is still online, accessible by anyone with Internet access.